orange-crowned warbler.

[nickolas thurston]

Hello Everyone, wanted some feedback on this shot, I really like it but feel like it could be improved. It was shot in challenging light, on a 7d mark II and a 500mm f4 version with a 1.4x converter f8 iso 800 1/800 sec. I processed it using photoshop to denoise the background and added sharpening after resizing. I having trouble putting my finger on whats wrong with it any help would be appreciated and thanks again for the great welcome to this forum.

[William Dickson]

Hi Nickolas. I think you have cropped this too tight. You should leave more room for the bird 'to breathe'. Also, you seemed to have over sharpened the bird, making it look too crunchy. Did you sharpen the whole image, as it looks like the perch is also over sharpened. When sharpening, select the bird only, and apply sharpening to that. Different people use different sharpening methods, I, along with others use unsharp mask. I also sharpen before rezsizing, then sharpen again after resizing, if it needs it. But, there are various ways of doing this. I would recommend practicing, and see what method suits you best. I hardly ever go over the value of 100 on the amount of sharpening, with my radius set at 1.0, and threshold at 0. again, this is personal preferences, depending on the image. There also appears to be noise on the bird, probably due to the crop. Another reason, not to crop too tight. If you expose to the right (ETTR) you will find it easier to deal with the noise. There is additional software you can use for denoising images, which work through photoshop. Neat Image or Nik Define2(which is a free download) are probably the most used ones, for this type of photography.

I hope this helps you Nickolas, and I am sure more members will chime in to give you more assistance.

Will

[Isaac Grant]

Nice look at an Orange crowned Warbler. We get very few of them passing through the North East and when we do get them they are always skuliking in the dense undergrowth. I'd love to get one out in the open like this. I agree with Williams very good critique. The bird has quite a bit too much sharpening, as does the background and perch. As he stated you should select the bird only. It is ideal to sharpen it only after you have resized the photo. I find that if you have a tack sharp image that using 100 and .5 in smart sharpen is often more than enough. Also it is better to have a shot where the bird does not have the membrane half closed on the eye as well. Could you detail exactly what steps you took when processing this shot? What were your settings?

[nickolas thurston]

First I converted the raw file in adobe camera raw, where I adjusted the highlights, white balance crop. I opened it in photoshop I used topaz to denoise the background and nik detail extractor on the bird. once I resized it I added unsharp mask but I did it globally not just on the bird. Thanks again for the advice I have a bad habit of cropping too much.

[nickolas thurston]

Here is a toned down re-edit

[Arthur Morris]

Wider is better. How much NIK DE did you use on the bird? The repost is less crunch than the original post ...

with love, artie